degree of excellence in both those arts. Those, on the contrary, whose
organization is more lively and vigorous, and whose nature and habits
fit them more for action than thought, will find little difficulty in
making any degree of cultivation of mind an immediate stepping-stone to
the other attainments: such persons can read at once with force and
truth as soon as education has given them accurate perceptions; they
will also write with ease, rapidity, and energy, as soon as the mind is
furnished with suitable materials. This is a kind of superiority which
you may often be inclined to envy, at least until experience has taught
you, in the first place, that the law of compensation is universal, and
in the second, that every thing is doubly valuable which is acquired
through hard labour and many struggles. For the first, you may observe
that such persons as possess naturally the mechanical facilities of
which I have spoken will never attain to an equal degree of excellence
with those whose naturally soft and inactive organization obliges them
to labour over every step of their onward way. They can, I repeat, never
attain to the same degree of excellence, either in feeling or
expression, because they do not possess the same refined delicacy of
perceptions, the same deep thoughtfulness and intuitive wisdom, as those
who owe these advantages to the very organization from which they
otherwise suffer. This is another illustration of the universal
law--that action is always in inverse proportion to power. For the
second, you will find that there is a pleasure in overcoming
difficulties, compared with which all easily attained or naturally
possessed advantages appear tame and vapid:[83] and besides the
difference in the pleasurable excitement of the contest, you are to
consider the advantage to the character that is derived from a battle
and a victory.

When I speak to you of writing, and of your attaining to excellence in